William Hurt promises a new version of General Ross in ‘Captain America: Civil War’

Marvel surprised a lot of fans when it announced that William Hurt would be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as General Thaddeus Ross from 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk.� However, Hurt tells Hero Complex that the version of Ross that he’s playing in the upcoming “Captain America: Civil War� feature will be very different.

While chatting with Hurt about his new AMC series “Humans,� we also found out a few behind-the-scenes details on the third Captain America movie. Turns out the version of Ross the audience will see in “Civil War� will be different from the original Hurt iteration. Hurt explained via phone:

What’s it like reprising General Ross? What’s his current role in the Avenger’s Initiative?

I don’t think it’s a reprise, I think it’s a new iteration completely. It’s a totally different production and a totally different style. I was worried, for a while, very worried, and so I asked them if I could go down early, which is something I usually do anyway. So I went down three or four days earlier and started looking at the old version of it and other movies, “Avengers� and the “Captain America� series, and realizing that we weren’t going to be doing that same thing at all.

What I created before was a Ross who was right out of the graphic novel type of thing, where he was as much of a cartoon, in a way, as the monsters were. His ego was just as big and his problems were just as big. I really did do that consciously. I created a General Ross before which created a verisimilitude for the monsters, by making him a human monster. I worked really hard on the makeup and the exaggerated behavior and things like that and a controlled psychosis. This is very, very different in what they’ve done …

You’re not allowed to say anything [because of secrecy agreements]. But this is a matured Ross. I don’t know if I’ve blown it, but I hope not.

So he’s less like the comic book version and more matured?

Well, I mean he’s still talking to people who have special powers [chuckles] … but he is a little less special, maybe.

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A new “mature� Ross? That ought to be very different indeed. But while we’ll have to wait to see this new Ross when the third Captain America movie premieres in 2016, you can see Hurt now on AMC’s scifi robot series “Humans� that airs this weekend.